2014

We were blessed with wonderful weather and thirsty neighbours this Saturday 🙂

I am so very proud to say that the kiddos brought in over $1300 for the Bravery Bead program at SickKids. THANK YOU to our neighbours, family and friends for your support. It is such an incredible testament to the people we’ve been fortunate to surround ourselves with.

The neighbourhood children should be very proud of their efforts.

Much love and thanks to everyone who has shared our information, made a donation, supported our vision and voice, and offered the children encouragement with a big thumbs up. The kids at SickKids work hard to get these beads and we’re proud to have the opportunity to support the program.

$1300 is alot of beads and alot of happiness. We can’t wait to share the news with everyone! But, for right now we are sitting with a cup of lemonade and basking in our happiness 🙂

Raising $300 for SickKids is a big deal for us, but we know that it is a modest contribution to the larger scope. Understanding this has led us to discuss what program our donation would impact positively and significantly.

The SickKids Foundation has a Bravery Bead Fund. As soon as we heard this, we knew where the donations would be best directed.

The Bravery Bead Program allows children who wish to participate, the chance to collect a different bead for each procedure or event while visiting the hospital for treatment. The goal of the program is to make a necklace with colourful beads that represent the unique and special journey of a particular child and to make something that they are proud of and want to share with family and friends. Beads are not given as a reward or something to be earned but rather to represent each child’s individual story through treatment.

WOW beads are special beads given after a particularly difficult procedure or on a particularly difficult day or perhaps just a first time for accomplishing something as simple as getting out of bed. Each child selects his/her own WOW bead from the drawer.

During our stay at SickKids Hospital our daughter collected quite a few beads. At times it was the reason she would see a test or procedure through. When you walk the halls at the hospital, kids wear their beads, albeit on IV poles or wheelchairs, with a great deal of pride.

Each bead has a story and no strings of beads look the same.

We hope that you approve of the decision to donate the funds to the Bravery Bead Program. For more information, click here.

The kiddos on the street have all been given a blank piece of paper so to scribe the invitations to the neighbours. This is the first, in a series of invites that we are going to photocopy and distribute, door to door, in a few weeks. This is the first step in our homespun lemonade stand’s guerilla marketing campaign 🙂